


the middle of the world

by pissedofsandwich



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fix-It, Jedi Finn (Star Wars), M/M, retconning the last two movies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24593710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pissedofsandwich/pseuds/pissedofsandwich
Summary: Finn wakes up, and somehow, that's the least confusing thing that's ever happened to him.
Relationships: Finn & Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 13
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

Finn wakes up, and somehow, that's the least confusing thing that's ever happened to him.

*

Hux used to say that the Resistance is doomed to fail due to its many inefficiencies. He'd painted a picture of barbaric, unruly soldiers with no care for organization in Finn's head. So far, he finds that out of the ten things the First Order taught him about the Resistance, perhaps only two and a half things are true.

One of those inefficiencies, perhaps, lies in the fact that the Resistance is investing in fixing him.

Dr. Kalonia is assigned to his case specifically. Poe says she was the one to personally oversee the twelve-hour surgery that sewed his spine back together. Finn still can't fathom why the Resistance, clearly cut off from the sophisticated resources available to the First Order, would waste so much time and effort on an ex-Stormtrooper like him, though he gets a feeling asking Dr. Kalonia to explain it to him is not really a good idea.

(This morning, as he was eating breakfast, he mentioned off-handedly that he'd really thought the Resistance would just leave him to bleed out on Starkiller Base. Dr. Kalonia's face went dark so quickly, Finn was afraid he'd offended the good doctor, and decided that his confusion could wait. Perhaps Poe can provide a better answer.)

It's the logical thing to do, though, Finn finds himself arguing in his head. Bacta gel is hard to come by, these days, and expensive, too. The Resistance must be pulling some truly strong strings to be able to afford bacta at all; that they'd spent about a pound of such a precious commodity just to fix him alone is outrageous when they could've spent the same amount of money on weapons. Things that actually win the war.

With his feet wobbly on the padded floor, panting as Poe helps him step forward, Finn cannot be used to win the war, and yet they keep him here, for something that's called _recovery_. They don't even push him to be better. He gets only as far as three steps in physical therapy, and Poe looks so overjoyed with all this progress but all Finn can think of is _wrong_. He shouldn't be celebrating a meager three-step progress. Finn should be _more_ , he should be healing faster, he should be out in the meetings, telling the General everything he can about the First Order, boots in the ground and blaster in hand, not copped out in the medical wing, having to ask for help just to fucking pee.

It's killing him, to be so helpless. To be useless. He suspects that maybe this horrible recovery is what counts as reprogramming among the Resistance, except it feels too elaborate when they can simply—toss him out of the airlock. Or leave him to die on Starkiller Base. Poe's face betrays nothing. He's smiling, big and happy, painfully kind, encouraging, and it's so foreign, the concept of support, that he feels like he's going to burst apart receiving it.

"I'm going to get better," Finn promises to Poe, almost desperately, laying on his stomach after a grueling hour of physical therapy. He wants this to work, for his _body_ to work.

"You will, buddy," Poe grips his shoulders and squeezes "You'll be up and running in no time."

He doesn't say, _Push yourself, Finn. You're worth nothing to the Resistance like this._

He instead says, "Take your time, Finn. You took a lightsaber to the back. Nobody's expecting anything out of you for at least a month."

He doesn't say, _The Resistance has no use for broken soldiers._

Poe gives his shoulder one last squeeze, his eyes unbearably soft when he instead says, "Don't worry. You're in good hands. We'll take care of you."

*

Rey is away on a planet called Ahch-To, seeking guidance from Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi, the only person capable of bringing balance to the Force, and changing the tide of this endless, raging war.

"She's sorry she can't be with you when you wake up," Poe tells him, apologetic. Other than this room, the throbbing pain in his back, and Dr. Kalonia checking up on him every eight hours, Poe is the only other constant so far. He’s been visiting him every night, telling him about his day, asking Finn about his day, as if he’s expecting Finn to say something other than, _Laying on my stomach._

(Finn doesn't know what it means or why he does it. He's a commander, the best pilot in the galaxy, and he spends most of his time hanging around an ex-Stormtrooper who can't walk further than to the bathroom and back.)

Poe says, "She has to move fast. We kicked their ass on Starkiller Base, but the First Order is simply licking its wounds. We can't afford to wait around."

Finn wants to ask him, _Why are you sorry? Why is she sorry at all?_ This is war. He never expected to be put in front of the needs of the entire galaxy. He is just a runaway, disposable in the face of a greater good.

He says, "Have we heard anything from Rey?"

Poe shakes his head. "She promises she will comm as soon as she gets the chance, though. The Falcon's communications system is a bit faulty, a lot of times transmissions get delivered way later than intended to."

"But she'll be fine?"

"She'll be fine," Poe says, resolute.

It's his seventh night of being alive on D'Qar. He keeps expecting that there is a time limit on all this, that maybe, he'll wake up one day and there's Dr. Kalonia there, telling him, in that painfully kind way she always talks to him _, I'm sorry, Finn, I did all I could, but your time's up_. It seems too good to be true that they'd just let him use up all their resources like this.

"What's the Jedi like?" Finn asks Poe instead.

Poe hesitates. "What do you know about the Jedi?"

That they're a myth, a fable. The opposite of order, bringing only chaos to the balance. Must be destroyed.

Finn shrugs.

"Okay. I guess over there at the First Order they talk about the Sith more often, huh?"

The Sith. Thousands of years ago, the Jedi killed all of them. Put up an oppressive reign in place. Only Darth Vader, the strongest Sith of the first war, was able to bring peace back to the galaxy, but a Jedi killed him. Kylo Ren is the new Sith now, primed since birth by Snoke himself to do the deeds left unfinished. He will crush the Jedi.

Finn says, "Yeah. I guess."

"They're... people who are really, really strong with the Force," Poe says. "They used to guard the balance in the Force, but some decades ago, the Jedi Order was destroyed by the Empire. Nobody's seen a Jedi until Luke Skywalker."

"He's the one who killed Darth Vader," Finn says.

"Um, no. He didn't kill Darth Vader," Poe says. "Darth Vader... so, he's a Sith, right. And there's two sides in this thing, the Sith with the Dark, and the Jedi with the Light. He had a change of heart at the last moment before he died. He turned to the Light and then he... died."

Finn stares at the ceiling. Two sides, Light and Dark. A change of heart. "Why did he have a change of heart?"

"Well... um, okay, did they ever tell you who Darh Vader is?"

"He is Darth Vader, the strongest—"

"No, I meant who he is underneath all—" Poe gestures wildly at his face, grimacing. "The apparatus."

Finn frowns. "He's just... Darth Vader."

"Well, before that, he was a... a person. A Jedi," Poe says. "He's... Luke's father. And the General's, too."

Finn takes a moment to let it all sink in. A Jedi turned Sith, who then had a change of heart. The General's and Luke's father. There are a lot of missing pieces here, the whys and hows, but his brain has been racing for the past hour, and he's getting really tired.

So he asks, "But the Jedi, the Jedi are _good_ , right? They're with the Light Side?"

Poe nods, but something in his voice is strained. "Yeah, buddy. They're the good guys."

Finn says, "Then Rey is safe."

For now, that's all that matters. He lets his eyes flutter close, sleep taking him under.

*

Though he’s beginning to walk just fine, Dr. Kalonia refuses to discharge him from medical. She says she still needs to keep him there for the purpose of observation. Finn knows he’s not being detained, but after a full week of being limited to only his bed, physical therapy, and the bathroom, he’s beginning to get a little antsy.

He tries his best to hide it—afraid he’ll come off as ungrateful, because he’s really _not_ , but the pristine white of medical reminds him too much of the life he spent growing up inside the steely white halls of the Star Destroyer, and he forgets, sometimes, that he’s not with the Resistance anymore when he wakes up dizzy from a dream about a glowing red lightsaber.

Poe notices, because that’s what he does. He notices everything about Finn, even the slightest wince, the softest hitch of his breath whenever Poe gets too close. One night, while they’re eating dinner, Poe on the chair with his tray balanced on his thighs, Finn sitting on the edge of the bed, he tells Finn, “Alright, buddy. Spill.”

Finn blinks at him, puzzled. “Spill what?”

Poe points at his legs. “You’re jiggling your knees.”

Finn looks down and—right, he didn’t even notice he was doing that. “So?”

“I do that when I get nervous,” Poe says. “When the General grounds me for far too long.” The intensity of his gaze makes Finn want to look away, something heavy in his chest.

“I can’t keep anything from you, can I?” Finn jokes. “How is it that we’ve only known each for like, a week and you can read me like an open book?”

Poe takes a long time to answer. He stares now at his fork, mulling it over between his fingers, as if it holds whatever complicated answer that he will provide Finn with. In the end he just shakes his head, a small smile playing on his lips when he says, “Just a lucky guess,” and it makes the heaviness in Finn’s chest flutter, and he doesn’t know why. “So, what’s wrong? And don’t try to tell me that you’re fine.”

Finn searches for the right way to frame his answer without coming off like a petulant child, and gives up. “It’s nothing, I’m just,” he cuts himself off, looking at Poe nervously. He’s _really_ hoping Poe wouldn’t ask for more, except Poe’s eyebrows knit, the way they do whenever Finn mentions something about his upbringing that’s apparently horrible, and he grapples for a distraction. “Hey, are your friends back from the fuel run, yet?”

Poe’s told him that while he’s on a comma, the rest of the Black Squadron is out on a Tibanna gas heist on a moon occupied by the First Order. Poe wasn’t cleared for mission yet when they took off, though he spared Finn the details, and Finn didn’t pry.

Poe looks startled at the question, but he recovers quickly. He’s always been better at controlling his expression—something about not spending the last 23 years of his life behind a plastoid helmet. “They’re on their way back, which is good news,” he says.

“Uh-oh,” Finn says. When there’s good news, there’s always bad news.

Poe grimaces. “Yeah, and the bad news is, they couldn’t find the Tibanna. Apparently, the First Order abandoned the post a week ago and took all the gas with them. Our intel was outdated.”

Finn’s heart goes out to them. He’s learned enough about the Resistance to know that the General won’t throw them out for a single failed mission, but he can’t help but wonder. “What would they say to the General?”

“Well, the General already knows, so it’s just a matter of planning our next step,” Poe says. He stabs a vegetable with his fork, a little too much force than necessary. “You know, keep moving forward and all that positivity. Blue Squadron’s already chasing another tail about a potential Rhydonium exchange in the Western Reaches, so we should be fine.”

“Yeah, except Rhydonium’s super unstable,” Finn says. “When I was nine, one of my squadmates—Jiggy—accidentally blew up an entire section of the Star Destroyer when he poked a hole into the tank.” He blows out a breath, remembering how furious Captain Hillbilly had been, how he never saw Jiggy again after.

“Oh, buddy,” Poe chuckles nervously. “That’s, um, terrible.”

“I know,” Finn says.

Poe clears his throat. “Yeah, anyway, we got another intel this morning and this should be good—one of C3PO’s intel droids, so a better source than the last one. A lot of hope is riding on this. Really hope the Force is with us this time.”

The Force and hope. They’re more often paired together than not, Finn observes. His dinner finished, he stacks his tray on top of Poe’s empty one on the bedside table. Poe always makes it a point to stay long after dinner. Finn pulls the covers to his hip, laces his fingers together. “Did you always want to be a pilot?”

Poe hums. “Another life didn’t even occur to me. My mom was a rebel pilot. Taught me how to fly when I was four. After that, being anything else just didn’t make sense.”

Finn has a lot of questions about that, but mostly, he just wants to know how it feels like to have a mom. Some nights, Finn thinks he’s sprouted into life as a scared five-year-old, shivering not just from cold in the barracks of a First Order facility, muffling his cries into the pillow. He must’ve had a mom, before. He wonders if he will love her, talk about her with the same fondness in Poe when he talks about his mom, but she probably won’t even recognize him. From what he knows about Project Resurrection, they were all stolen as babies.

_Another life didn’t even occur to me._

“I—” Finn gulps. “I don’t know what I should be.”

Poe leans forward. “Do you want to stay at the Resistance?” he asks, and his voice is so kind, letting Finn know that there’s no force in this, only options and free will.

Finn thinks about it. His original plan is to run away with Rey, exile himself under an anonymous identity on some Outer Rim planet, away from the wrath of the war. It didn’t feel right anymore. Rey is off to be a Jedi; her priorities have surely changed. “Yes,” Finn says, and is surprised by how much he means it. “I just don’t know where I fit in yet.”

“You can be with the Pathfinders,” Poe smirks. “Following old Solo’s footsteps. My dad served under him. I’ve seen you with a blaster, Finn. You’re more than formidable.”

Finn thinks about Takodana, wrenching blasters out of the hands of dead ‘troopers, shooting at the ones who shot at him. Thinks about Nines, his menacing control baton, yelling at him, _Traitor!_ Something must’ve showed on his face, because Poe surges forward, placing his palm on top of Finn’s, soothing.

“Hey,” he says, “No need to figure it all out by tonight, okay? We got a lot options. You don’t even have to be on the ground. We’re always short-staffed here in the Resistance.”

“I only know about being a soldier,” Finn says. “And maybe sanitation.”

Poe squeezes his hand, and the heaviness makes itself known again, tying knots around Finn’s heart. “Then you learn something new.”

*

He's discharged from medical by Dr. Kalonia after the fifteenth night, with a strict order to come by every morning after breakfast for physical therapy, and to apply a bacta spray to his back every night, before he sleeps.

Poe is not there, which is fine. He’s gone before Finn wakes up, and it’s not like Poe has to say goodbye to him. It’s very _urgent_ , which means that Poe has to move fast—as soon as Black Squadron touched down for a refuel, they were gone again, Dr. Kalonia said with a distasteful shake of her head, Poe leading them this time.

It’s the recon mission that Poe told him about, the details of which Finn has not been given access too. Which, again, is _fine_ ; he's an ex-Stormtrooper—he would be worried if the Resistance trusts him easily. He helped them locate the thermal oscillators on Starkiller Base but—he hasn't earned it. Not yet.

Mostly, Finn is just glad that Poe is finally cleared for active duty. Poe may never have said it out loud, but Finn knows being grounded makes him antsy, the way being stuck to the bed makes Finn feel.

He’s escorted to his room by a medi-droid. "It is the only room we have available," the medi-droid says, sounding a bit apologetic. A lot of the people in the Resistance is apologetic, to him especially. Finn doesn't know why. "It is rather small, but we thought you'd appreciate your own room better than bunking with the new recruits."

Finn looks around the room. He's used to only having eight squares of space for him, and now he has a whole room. A single bed, a table, a holopad, a set of clothes. He sees the familiar brown of Poe's jacket in the stack, and feels something in his heart clench. It's a hunch, but he just knows Poe got it fixed.

"Thank you," he says to the medi-droid, even though he knows it's probably the authorities who set him up with such a luxury. "This is more than enough." More than _anything_ he's ever had.

“You’re quite welcome, Mr. Finn,” the medi-droid says. “If that’s all…?”

Finn bites his lip. Dr. Kalonia says he will be the first to know when he’ll be cleared for combat training, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check. “Do you know when I’ll be cleared for training?”

“That is the doctor’s decision to make, not mine,” the medi-droid says. It’s the answer that Finn’s expected, but he’s still disappointed. He must’ve shown it in his face because the medi-droid says, “It’s been barely over two weeks, Mr. Finn. Usually, people take way longer to recover from such a wound.” A beat, then, “Most people don’t survive at all.”

“I know,” Finn says.

The medi-droid pauses.

“Um, thanks, anyway,” Finn says. He doesn’t want the medi-droid think that he’s rude, asking the same question over and over again. Then he remembers. “What’s your name?”

The medi-droid tilts its metal head, curious. “I do not have a name, only a designation.”

“Yeah, what’s your designation?”

“MD09,” the medi-droid says, and if Finn didn’t know better, he would say that it sounds amused. But droids have no emotions, so he must be imagining things.

“Emdee,” Finn says. “Can I call you Emdee?”

The medi-droid lets out a garble of sound that almost sounds like a laugh. “Why, Mr. Finn,” the medi-droid says, “I’d certainly be honored.”

Emdee leaves after Finn reassures it, for the third time, that _I’ll be fine, Emdee, I know my way around the Resistance base_ , even though only half of it is true. Finn is sure he will be fine, but he doesn’t really know his way around the base. Not yet, anyway. The second he can walk from medical to his room without completely exhausting himself, he will make exploring the base his priority.

Finn falls asleep on top of his holopad, halfway through the recount of the Battle of Scarif. He wakes up with a start, reminds himself that he’s not late for any early morning march because he’s no longer with the First Order, that he is with the Resistance and they are _good_ , they are helping him recover although he still doesn’t understand why. His holopad dings, and he looks down at the words flashed on the screen, _Physical therapy in 20 minutes._

He supposes that it gives him enough time for breakfast. The holopad provides him with a comprehensive map of the Resistance base, so theoretically, he knows that the cafeteria is just down the hall, then a sharp left from his room, in Wing A. It still feels nerve-wracking, somehow, which is ridiculous—in the First Order, he’s never had time to worry about these little, insignificant things. He wakes up, puts on his armor, and marches until 0800, where he has approximately ten minutes to finish his nutrient pills and protein bars. An alarm usually signals the end and the start of every designated of activity, but there’s nothing like that in the Resistance, just the ever-present rumble of the steam-powered generator.

He goes to the ‘fresher, puts on the clothes someone has very kindly set on the table for him, a black shirt made of the softest material he’s ever felt, and pants that have a lot of pockets. The pants are a little too snug on him, but Finn makes it work. Everything in the First Order is standard-issued, one-size-fits-all. He’s learned to make do with a lot of things.

Then, finally, the jacket. There’s a note stuck to the inside of it, and it says, _This is the best I could do with your jacket. I hope it suffices,_ and a swirl of words that Finn thinks spell out of Poe’s name. He can’t suppress a smile at that; so Poe _did_ fix the jacket. His hunch was right. The rip in the back has been secured with a row of staples, and Finn imagines Poe, sitting on the chair he always sits on in medical, painstakingly bringing together the broken parts and BB-8 stapling it back together with a piece of metal. It’s sort of like what they did with his spine, Finn supposes, and he likes that fact so much.

He holds his holopad to his chest and takes a deep breath. To the cafeteria. _Just follow the instruction,_ he thinks. Find the cafeteria, eat whatever ration is served, then get to physical therapy as soon as possible.

Except that he’s grossly underestimated how _different_ breakfast in the Resistance would be. He finds the cafeteria, alright, but that’s the least of his problems. In fact, that’s the beginning of a problem. He walks in through the double doors, and is attacked with an array of different smells so suddenly that for a long while he just. Stands there, frozen. Blinking. Curses himself for staying up reading about the history of the rebellion but not the _customs_ of the Resistance.

The manual is there, in the first page, but Finn has naively thought, _Well, how different can it be?_ Skipped over it entirely, and now here he stands, clueless, while Resistance fighters in different uniforms and civvies mill around him with plates of food that has _color_. He’s seen food like that back at Maz’s palace, but. He’d assumed food like that is meant for leisure, not daily sustenance. Especially at a military base.

“Oh,” he says, with a lot of feeling. “Fuck.”

Then he just. Turns around and bolts.

*

Dr. Kalonia knows immediately that he skipped breakfast, which is kind of terrifying. She takes one look at him and says, “You didn’t eat breakfast, did you?” and Finn just sort of shifts his weight between his feet, ashamed, until she sighs and gives him a piece of bread.

Well, when she gave it to him he didn’t know it was called _bread_ , but he later finds out that’s what it’s called as he scrolls through the menu of the cafeteria, getting increasingly angry at the First Order that for twenty-three years, he’s only been allowed to eat goddamn protein bars and nutrition pills when there’s something called _bread_ and _pancakes_ and _sandwiches_ , all this time.

“There’s just—people,” Finn mumbles around a piece of bread. “Standing around, talking.”

“Lining up to take their own portion,” Dr. Kalonia says.

“You can do that?” Finn says. “Why would the Resistance allow it? Wouldn’t it be harder to control their health?”

Dr. Kalonia blinks, like this isn’t a question she ever expected to be asked. She sits down across from Finn. When she speaks, it’s slow, calculated, like she’s worried of slipping up. “Well, the resistance is made up of many different species. Rather than trying to make forty different meal plans for every day of the week, it’s much simpler to just let everyone control their own diet.”

Finn supposes that makes sense. But, “What if someone takes too much and leaves too little for the rest of the squad?”

Dr. Kalonia smiles. “I guess you share, then.”

Finn chews slowly, thinking about the time Phasma had him on guard duty for weeks just for slipping some of his ration to Slip, who hadn’t eaten in almost 18 hours as punishment for lagging in the last drill run. Guard duty is the worst—he has to stand there, not moving, no food or drink, for over 12 hours. Break formation, then it’s off to reconditioning. It’s all very unpleasant.

So sharing food doesn’t get someone punished. That’s a good thing. Finn’s never minded sharing.

Slowly but surely, Finn’s getting better and better. His back still feels a little stiff at times, and he still has trouble raising his arms above his head, but it usually goes away with a little spray of bacta. Dr. Kalonia catches him pushing himself sometimes, and Finn tries to lie and tell her that he’s not feeling any pain, he can do this, he can push himself a little further, but every time, Dr. Kalonia would stare him down until Finn sighs and admits that his back is hurting, just a little.

“You’ll end up hurting yourself, if you keep this up,” Dr. Kalonia chastises him, not unkindly.

“I’m sorry,” Finn says, “I just can’t take more of this sitting around and doing nothing. I have to get back on the field. Please.” _I can be more of use. That way, I won’t feel like I’m not worth all this treatment._

Dr. Kalonia looks at him, long and unyielding. “Did you get a doctorate in medical science, Mr. Finn?”

Finn blinks. “No?”

“Then between the two of us, I’m the one who gets to decide when you can get back on the field, alright?” Dr. Kalonia says, her eyebrows raised. Finn ducks his head. “If you feel like going stir-crazy in this base, try exploring.”

“I’ve walked this base from end to end, Doctor,” Finn says. He thinks he’s not whining. Hopefully, he doesn’t sound like he is. “I can draw a map of this base with my eyes closed.”

“I mean the outdoors, Finn,” Dr. Kalonia says. Something seems to dawn on her. “You… you know that’s allowed, right?”

Finn feels his cheeks burn. When will he stop feeling like a lost little child in this base? Every day, there’s always a new rule that he didn’t previously know, a thing that is apparently mundane to the rest of the base but him. “Of course I _do_ ,” Finn says indignantly, conveying all the energy of someone who didn’t grow up on surrounded by plastoid, prohibited from ever leaving. “I was just—waiting for Poe. Yeah, that’s it. I’m waiting for him, so we can explore the jungle together.”

He really hopes Poe won’t mind being namedropped into this. He glances up subtly at the ceiling, sending out his apology in advance. Poe has been gone for three days now with the rest of the Black Squadron. Finn misses him, and that’s a new feeling that he doesn’t really want to dissect. Mostly because it makes his chest ache just to think about it.

Dr. Kalonia says, “Well, why don’t you go ahead? When Poe comes back, you can show him your favorite parts in the jungle.”

“I was _just_ about to do that,” Finn lies, rising to his feet.

Dr. Kalonia waves him off, already turning to her holopad. “Just don’t wander too far. The jungle goes deep.”

“Definitely,” Finn says. “I’m going now. I’m _definitely_ going now.”

“Okay,” Dr. Kalonia says, her back to Finn, absentmindedly. Finn only spends about ten seconds hovering near the doorway before he pushes it open, exhaling heavily.

Exploring the outdoors. He can definitely do that. He’s always wanted to—the first planet he ever remembered seeing was a forest-covered earth, green everywhere he looked. He’d wanted to go out, catch the leaves between his fingers, let the sun hit his skin, but Captain Pryde had an iron fist that he didn’t hesitate to use on the trainees, so Finn just squashed the desire down until he couldn’t feel it anymore.

He’d just assumed it would be the same here, in the Resistance. But of course _everything_ is done differently at the Resistance, just like breakfast and recovery and everything in between.

So Finn explores, bringing his holopad around, trying to match the biodiversity he finds with the pictures on the datalog. When the Resistance made D’Qar their headquarters, Finn recalls, they didn’t find any sign of intelligent life—perhaps, at some point, a civilization existed on D’Qar, advanced enough to built a city, but all the Resistance could find were woodland creatures, birds, insects, and ruins old enough to precede the first Galactic Civil War.

He can recognize some of the edible nuts and seeds. They’re part of the daily diet in the Resistance, usually eaten with a mix of mashed sweet fruits, and they taste nice and nourishing in ways that protein bars and nutrition pills cannot fulfill him. Further into the jungle, the sunlight struggles to peek through the giant trees, but it feels—fresher, somehow. Calmer. He can see birds nesting on branches, some indifferent to his existence, some curious, peering down at him, their little heads tilted. Finn recognizes a bunch of them from the datalog already—the red-beaked Onyx, blue-feathered Juur, and when there are ones that he can’t figure out, he sits down on the grass, takes out the pen from a pocket in his holopad and sketches them.

(He’s also really careful with the grass. In the foreword to the datalog, the General has written, _Be mindful of where—and what—you walk (on). The grass doesn't mind being walked on, but it does feel it. Everything that's alive can feel what happens to it. That's an important truth to remember._ He takes it to heart.)

It’s the most _fun_ he’s ever had in—stars, perhaps the first time, ever. He remembers spending hours just staring at the window, at the vastness of the black that stretches on and on outside of the plastoid walls, asking himself, _what’s out there? Are there people like him out there, with skin like his and hair like his?_ Then he’ll berate himself, angry that he’d let himself think unloyal thoughts again, paranoid that somehow, Captain Phasma will catch him wistfully looking outside, send him to punishment—or worse, reprogramming—even though in this helmet with limited eyesight, no one can tell which way he’s looking, or if he’s sleeping.

But now he’s really _outside­_ , sitting on the grass underneath a very tall tree, making sketches of birds on a holopad, and feelings hit him all at once. The anger has become familiar now, resurfacing every time he finds another simple human thing that the First Order has deprived him of, sadness, a fear of being left behind, even though he knows, _he knows_ he has a lifetime to catch up, to unlearn every single indoctrination the First Order has poisoned his brain with. His chest feels _heavy_ with feelings, and he doesn’t know what to do with them, he’s never had this many and this intense before, so he just. Keeps drawing.

*

He’s made it into a clearing after hours of sitting under the tree, just sketching a long-tailed bird pecking at the wood of a tree across from him, changing the colors in his pen every so often to get the perfect shade. He’s started feeling pain at the base of his spine at some point and decides to get up and walk back to the base, when he hears a trickle of water and thinks, _Is it going to rain?_

He turns his head skyward, but the sun shines just as blindingly. There aren’t even clouds. Clear as day. His holopad shows that it’s almost time for dinner, and he thinks, _I should probably get back_. The Resistance doesn’t have a strict curfew—that, he knows, because it is written in the rulebook and not some unspoken thing that everyone already knows—but he can’t help but feel like it’s unlawful, somehow, to return after dark.

He’s a little wary, afraid now that he’s free to roam around, he’s going through the list too fast, exhausted all discoveries to be had in this jungle in one day. Maybe he should explore at a slower pace, savor it all until he’s gotten bored of it, instead of jumping from one exciting thing to another. He hesitates, but in the end, curiosity wins. He follows the sound, anticipation making him a little jittery as he begins to notice the grass giving way to a path of sand. He pushes at a curtain of large leaves blocking his view, the water impossibly close now, and then he sees it.

The ocean, stretching as far as his eyes can see. In the far horizon, the sun’s beginning to set, and it looks like it’s going to dive into the ocean. The ocean looks darker now, reflecting the sun in glitters on the surface, waves breaking into large formation of rocks lazily. Here, the sand is whiter, and he wonders if the sand feels as soft as it looks. 

_I should take off my boots_ , he thinks. So he does, and the sensation of sand touching his feet is new, coarse but not unwelcome. His feet sink a little into the sand as he walks, but it’s kind of nice. Pleasant, even. _This is a beach,_ he realizes. _It’s beautiful_. The water gently laps at his toes, never getting high enough to wet his feet, but he rolls up his pants anyway. He sets himself down near the water, his knees pulled up to his chest, just slowly taking this all in. The warmth of the sun, the cold water, the coarse sand, something about this all—about everything that he’s found, thus far—that makes him want to weep.

(All these damn _years_ —)

He watches the sun, watches and watches and watches until everything blurs, and then he turns his eyes into the cushion he’s made of his arms around his folded knees, and cries.

*

That night, he sleeps in increments. He keeps jolting awake every hour or so, sweating and heart pounding, the ghost of Nines and Slip haunting the back of his mind. In his nightmare, he’s back on the village, and Phasma tells him, _Shoot_ , except this time Finn’s not facing a line of villagers. Nines and Slip look back at him, their faces impossibly young, helmet off but the Stormtrooper armor on. The worst thing is that Finn raises his blaster and _shoots_ , but they don’t die, they just keep staring at Finn, asking him, _Why are you doing this? We never had a choice._

_Another life didn’t even occur to us._

In another nightmare, Poe pushes a blaster into his hands. _I’ve seen you with a blaster, Finn. You’re more than formidable._ And then he’s snatched back in the First Order ship, kicking and screaming and bleeding from his eyes, and there’s Nines and Slip, the only ones standing between him and Poe, and a voice on the back of his mind keeps chanting, _Make a choice, make a choice, make a choice—_

After the third time, Finn feels sick enough that he doesn't try to go back to sleep. He sits up, leaning against the bare wall, pulling the sheets so it pools around his shoulders, and looks at the only window in his room. There's no movement as it is the dead of the night, but he imagines Poe's black-striped X-Wing making a land on it, arriving back on D'Qar with a mission accomplished with the rest of the Black Squadron behind him. They look like heroes, in Finn's mind, with their unmistakable orange flightsuits, helmets tucked under their armpits.

(Finn catches his reflection in the dirty transperisteel and thinks, _Can a scarred boy be a hero_?)

Poe told him a lot of stories about his squadron, back when his range of movement was still limited and he could only lay on his stomach in medical, having just enough energy to open his eyes and listen. He talked about them like—like _friends_. Finn's never had one in the First Order, but he thinks it would be exactly like Poe and his squadron. Rey, maybe, and his chest hurts again at the thought of her. He misses her too.

Poe told Finn about quitting the New Republic Fleet, angry at their inaction at the First Order's growing threat, Karé Kun and Iolo Arana following him, Iolo ending up with a squadron of his own and Karé under his command. About Jessika Pava, a Dandoran native with a bad luck with astromech droids, about the frustrating month of will-they-won't-they between Karé and Temmin Wexley, who's actually called Snap, for some reasons.

It's a nickname, the way Nines and Zeroes had been, and Finn thinks having a nickname on top of a real, given name is kind of overkill, but Poe said here, in the Resistance, nicknames were like a love letter to your best qualities—then again, he'd said with a grin, it could also be your most infamous trait.

Like The Great Destroyer, for Jess, after the fact that she kept losing astromech droids on missions. Apparently, BB-8 had said, _You keep testing us, Pilot-Jess_ , and some pilots heard about it, and began calling her Testor, too.

(Like Slip, Finn realizes. After the fact that he keeps slipping up. Always too slow, always forgetting things, losing things, misinterpreting orders. Never up to the standard. And then, he paid the price when he died on Tuanul, too busy fighting with his own blaster to notice one aiming at him.

To this day, Finn still thinks red on white is an eerie color combination.)

Poe promised to introduce Finn to Black Squadron, once he recovered. He said they'd been dying to meet him. Finn's afraid they'd be disappointed when they find him lacking of—everything.

Finn wishes Poe would be back soon. There are a lot of things Finn wants to tell him. Poe never looks at him with pity whenever Finn admits a strange custom here in the Resistance that he doesn't understand yet, just explains it to Finn easily, like it's not a big deal. He doesn't make Finn feel inadequate—the opposite, Finn is excited to talk to Poe about new things he's discovered, and Poe always answers with just as much excitement, and it always makes his chest feel light. Finn wants to tell him about the forest, the birds, the beautiful sun sinking into the ocean, wants to take him there to the beach and asks him to just feel the sand beneath his bare feet.

He doesn't realize when he dozed off, but when he wakes up again, the sickly feeling in his stomach's dissipated, and Finn feels a little more ready than usual to face his day.

*

Finn spends nearly every afternoon at the beach, after that. He's found a shortcut that slashed the usual trek time by twenty standard minutes, making the daily journey a bit more forgiving on his spine. He consumes as many datalogs as he can, memorizing important pieces of information like he's preparing for a quiz, and when he gets bored of the monotony of history, he switches to fiction, and drowns himself in stories of princesses and Jedi warriors and smugglers. He thinks that some of the elements are clearly exaggerated, like the depiction of a cantina as some kind of sex-laden tavern with half-naked men making out on tables, but the main plotline is pretty good.

The sex scenes, in his opinion, use way too many euphemisms to be enjoyable. What is it that these writers have against saying a penis? Or a vagina? Why must genitalia be called a "member" or a "princess part"?

(Side note: Finn's pretty sure that princesses are not the only ones to have a vagina. This is an undisputed fact. Perhaps this is why the story is categorized as fiction.)

General Organa finds him on the beach on one of those days, getting increasingly worked up at the very unrealistic details of the story (seriously, what do these writers have against _lube_? And in the ‘ _fresher_ , of all places?), and tells him, “Oh, I love hate-reading that.”

Finn yelps, because he really did not expect he would be getting company any time soon, and also because he’s pretty sure what he’s reading is pure filth, and the General is standing there, in all her elegance, watching him read pure filth. He slams his holopad screen-side down. “General,” he says, cheeks warm, and scrambles to stand on attention.

“At ease, soldier,” the General waves her hand. “Office hours ended an hour ago.”

The General smooths down the back of her long tunic, making a move to sit down next to Finn. He wonders if he should do something, like lay down his jacket for the General to sit on, but the General folds her knees and plops down next to him almost with no thought, shoulder-to-shoulder like they’re in the same rank.

“You love the beach, Finn?” the General asks.

“It’s beautiful, General,” Finn says.

“This is my secret hideout spot, the first few weeks we moved here,” the General says, looking straight ahead at the sinking sun. “When discussions got too heated in command center, I used to come here, taking my dinner with me. I’d stay until the sky’s dark.” Finn fiddles with the frayed end of his jacket, considers apologizing for spoiling the General’s hideout spot, then the General says, “I’m glad you found it.”

Finn looks down at the white sand. “It’s very peaceful.”

“It is, indeed,” the General agrees. She turns her kind eyes on Finn. “You love reading, Finn?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Finn says, trying as subtly as he can to hide the holopad behind his back. “Um—I promise that book isn’t the only thing I read.”

There’s laughter in the General’s eyes when she easily snatches it from behind Finn’s back. Her fingerprint scan overrides his own, because _of course_ , and Finn gets ready for the onslaught of shame as soon as the page loads. “Oh, this is Poe’s favorite,” she says, sliding it back to Finn, which doesn’t make him feel any better. “And I think he really loves it unironically.”

Finn stores this information for later. He _has_ to make fun of Poe mercilessly over this, because _really_? But, most importantly, “Hate-reading?”

“Oh, it’s when you can’t put something down because of how fantastically bad it is,” the General says. “You finish a book just so you can make fun of it. It’s actually a popular pastime in the book club.”

Finn has a hard time reconciling this image of the General to the one he sees leading the meeting before the attack on Starkiller Base, all five feet of her commanding a room full of people with just her voice slightly raised. Then he thinks about the book, the dumb protagonist and the appalling lack of lube, and thinks he understands the appeal. “Okay, but seriously, General, I read a lot of other books too,” he says, skipping to his library, in some effort to repair his image in front of the General. “Um, _Biotechnology and Alien Life_ is very interesting but a little hard too understand, so I haven’t finished it, but the rest of it—”

Finn peeks at the General, who looks on, looking amused, and promptly closes his holopad. He’s definitely not repairing his image in front of the General.

“Finn,” the General says, “I’m not judging.”

Finn pretends he’s taking all this gracefully, but inside, he’s thinking that death would be kinder.

“I’m glad you’re developing hobbies, Finn,” the General tells him sincerely. She reaches out, squeezes his shoulder briefly, her eyes now serious. “I know that you’ve been asking Dr. Kalonia to get cleared for combat, but I want you to know this, Finn: I won’t be the person to ask you to pick up a blaster. Not ever. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want, even if you just sit around on the beach reading trashy books all day. Stars know you deserve it, after all that you’ve been through.”

Finn’s throat feels dry, and it’s funny because water stretches out of him as far as his eyes can see. He doesn’t know what to do about a General who doesn’t tell him to go to war. “I want to help,” he says, finally. “I—I need to be useful, I can’t just sit around here and do nothing, General. I’m a _soldier_.”

He looks up to see the General already looking at him, and it reminds him of Solo’s words: _Women always figure out the truth._ This time, it seems the General knows it before he does. Can he call himself a soldier when he can’t think of a blaster without thinking about the way Nines and Slip died? The countless ‘troopers that he’ll never learn the names of, all dying on Takodana, on Starkiller Base?

“It—it was _easy_ , back then,” Finn says, barely above a whisper. “I—I don’t know why it isn’t, now, but I swear, General, I want to help.”

“Finn, you are never useless,” the General says, something forceful and angry in her voice. “Oh, _you_ —come here.”

She wraps her arms around him and pulls him into a hug. This is a woman who’s lost everything. Her planet blown up to shreds, her son to the dark side, and then her husband, at her son’s hands, when Finn could’ve helped—he should’ve helped, should’ve jumped from that ledge instead of watching in horror. Yet kindness has not left her, and Finn feels it in her hug, all encompassing like a warm blanket, and fleetingly, Finn asks himself, _Is this what having a mother feels like?_

The General lets go, and Finn feels a little bit sheepish when he finds his eyes wet. Thankfully, the General doesn’t mention it. They continue to sit in silence as the sun sets over the horizon, and Finn finds himself thinking, _Whatever kind of person Kylo Ren is, he’s the worst kind. How could someone raised by Leia Organa turn out to be like him?_

“I want to help,” Finn says again, just so the General doesn’t misunderstand. He needs to do something that has a _purpose_. “General, _please_ let me help.”

“Alright,” the General exhales. “Alright, if you insist. Our Research and Development department can always use an extra pair of hands. Can you report there at 0800 hours tomorrow?”

Finn nods. “Yes, Ma’am.”

The General goes serious. “And another thing,” she leans in, “and this is very important, so you have to listen carefully, okay?”

Finn’s heart quickens. An important mission? Already? “Anything, Ma’am.”

“Call me Leia,” the General says, and Finn bursts out laughing.


	2. Chapter 2

In the First Order, being recruited into Research and Development is a great honor. It means that you’re brightest in the mind, the frontline of every First Order attack despite not being there in person. Your weapons are, first and foremost, the machineries that bring glory to the First Order, so you should wear the uniform proud.

It’s a little different in the Resistance.

Well, _a lot_ different.

Finn knocks repeatedly on the wooden door that has a sign that says, _R &D, _in crooked handwriting. When nobody answers, he tries to push the door open, and it gives. Finn worries on his bottom lip, wondering if he should wait for someone to fetch him, but the time on the holopad says it’s 0815, so he steps in. General’s orders.

The inside of the room is a mess, it triggers a leftover instinct inside him to grab the nearest sponge and just. Clean everything. There’s no clear demarcation between the workspace and what he deduces to be a makeshift laboratory, except for a stack of books that’s leaning dangerously to the left. The coat hanger is home to about a half a dozen broken goggles and one dirty lab coat that has seen its best days a long time ago. He cannot even begin to dissect what it is he’s looking at in the mess of Erlenmeyer flasks and test tubes in the laboratory part of the room. He thinks he sees a bundle of hardfruit husks, but he can’t be sure.

He does his best to ignore the urge to clean and calls out, “Hello?”

A sound like someone’s head hitting the underside of a table, a couple of hardcovers falling on the floor, and a head full of black hair pops out under said table. The owner of said head looks blearily up at Finn, then, “Oh my God!”

“Careful!” Finn tries to tell her, but she hits her head again on her way to greet Finn, and he winces.

“It’s fine, I’m fine, this has happened to me more times than I care to admit,” the girl says, rolling out from where she’s camped out under the table, and stands up to offer Finn her hand. Finn shakes it warily. “Nice to meet ya, I totally didn’t forget that the General had assigned someone to my department, my name is Rose Tico.”

“I’m Finn,” he says, and realizes this is only the third time he’s introduced himself with that name.

Rose laughs. “Yeah, like not everyone knows that already.”

Finn blinks. “What?”

“Oh my God, you’re like, super popular in the cafeteria. Aside from the scavenger slash Jedi girl, of course,” Rose says. “You guys are local heroes.” Finn hopes his face communicates how much he does not agree with that statement. Rey is a hero, but he’s not sure he can say the same thing about himself.

“Sorry, here I am, running my mouth again,” Rose says. “I promise I’m not always this chirpy, but I’ve been running this department on my own and talking to myself for several months, so forgive me—and this mess, too.”

“I can help out with the mess, if you want,” Finn says.

“Oh, I’m never treating an intern like that—” Rose looks at him. “Wait, you’re serious. You really want to help me sort out the mess?”

Finn looks around them. The tower of books has shifted an alarming degree, and it’s going to fall on the rack of upside-down flasks. “Why not?” he says to Rose, grinning. “I mean, I used to be in sanitation.”

“Cool!” Rose says, and grabs a broom that’s somehow lying on the floor. She tosses it to Finn. “I mean, not cool that you used to be in the First Order. That part’s not cool at all. But you know what’s cool? That you _renounced_ them. That’s fucking cool.”

They get to work on tidying up the work station first. Rose tells him that most of the experiments that she’s doing focuses on learning more about the biodiversity on the planet, which works for Finn. He doesn’t think he can work with any weapons any time soon. “Biotechnology, basically,” Rose says. “My formal education is mechanical engineering, but there’s already a team of mechanics handling all the repairs, so it’s not at all challenging to me.”

“Why would someone openly want a challenge?” Finn wonders aloud, handing her a fallen spatula off the floor.

“Well, monotony gets boring,” Rose says, running the spatula under water. “I already know how to fix an X-Wing, or how to get the generators running, so I asked the General if I could expand on my studies back on—well. You know.”

To everyone, _back_ always means the same thing. _Back before the First Order_. It makes his blood boil, just to think about it. “Anyway,” Rose continues, “I read a lot of journals on the holonet, on the published studies that the scientists from the New Republic are doing, found out a lot of interesting theories that I could test on, and here we are.”

“Can you show me some of the things that you’re working on?” Finn asks.

“Finn,” Rose tells him, heartfelt, “It would be my honor.”

After the work station’s been cleared up, and all broken apparatus set aside for repairs (“We do not throw things away, Finn,” Rose says, “We fix them.” Finn immediately thinks that she’d get on so well with Rey), Rose shows him her projects. “I’m working on producing biofuel, mostly,” Rose says. “Fuel is always a huge problem in war. Tibanna’s hard to come by, thanks to First Order embargo, and Rhydonium’s—”

“Really unstable,” Finn says, grimacing.

“So—biomass,” Rose says. “Accessible source of fuel. Inside every living thing—photosynthetic organisms, yeast, bacteria—there’s always energy storage. It’s only a matter of how we harness that energy. You know, kind of like the Force.”

Finn is still figuring out how the Force works, but he takes it all in stride.

Out of all the experiments she’s doing, two are the most promising. One project involves algae and genetic engineering and the other involves enzymes and the hardfruit husks that are apparently useful. Rose explains everything in great detail, which is very overwhelming for someone who can barely finish _Biotechnology and Alien Life_ , and this is where Finn realizes the very reason why the General assigned him to this department. It makes him smile inwardly.

Rose forwards him a folder of studies to read. “It is a little overwhelming at first,” she warns, “but it gets better, I promise.”

Finn stares at the titles of some of the studies, some featuring words that he has never heard of until now. He gets kind of choked up thinking about how he never would’ve thought this is what his life has come to be, instead of the monochrome walls of a First Order ship and the droning ritual of being a soldier and nothing else.

_Another life didn’t even occur to me._

“That’s okay,” Finn tells Rose, “I think I’m going to love the challenge.”

*

Finn focuses on the one with enzymes, because _genetic engineering_ sounds imposing and really menacing. First he learns about microorganisms and metabolism—they’re where the enzymes come from, apparently—scribbles down more notes that he thinks he’s ever taken in a First Order classroom, and highlights entire paragraphs.

“Okay, you’re supposed to _just_ highlight the important parts,” Rose says when she sees him reading.

Finn spreads his arms, like, _what can I do?_ “Everything is important,” he argues.

“So you’re just coloring your book?” Rose raises her eyebrows.

Then he learns about chemical reactions, _bio_ chemical reactions. How water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen molecules, how combustion creates water and carbon dioxide, how everything is, intrinsically, made up of atoms that react to create just _you_. How everything is integrated to one another—how in humans, carbon dioxide is a wasteful product, and how in photosynthetic organisms, carbon dioxide is a feed. Interconnected, all-around.

“Just like the Force,” the General says, the second time she catches him on the beach, this time reading something that doesn’t make his cheeks burn. “All is as the Force wills it.”

He learns that the hardfruit husks contain cellulose that can be hydrolyzed with the help of enzymes into reducing sugars, which can then be further fermented into fuel alcohols. Then he has a brief existential crisis about the fact that enzymes are proteins—they are _not_ alive—but somehow are so useful that it becomes the center of Rose’s research.

“Meanwhile some humans are just—a _bummer_ ,” Finn says, thinking about Kylo Ren and Hux blowing up an entire galactic system, while all the enzymes produced from bacteria, which he didn’t think was ever going to be of any use except for spreading disease, are just. Here. Catalyzing a hydrolysis reaction.

“Mm-hmm,” Rose says, definitely not listening to him as she looks into a microscope at a colony of bacteria.

He learns that Rose’s biggest issue with the hydrolysis is the complete waste of enzymes. Because enzymes are water-soluble, every time Rose finishes a run, the enzymes get thrown away along with the unconverted substrates. The colony of bacteria doesn’t always provide a consistent amount or concentration of enzymes for a given period of time, which makes it harder to do a continuous cycle.

“What if we just—” Finn frowns. “Actually, never mind.”

“What?” Rose looks up.

“It’s a stupid idea,” Finn says.

“No idea’s stupid in this lab,” Rose tells him seriously.

Finn takes a deep breath. “Okay, but you have to promise not to laugh.”

Rose offers Finn her pinky finger, which Finn has also taken to learn to mean, _I promise._ Finn says, “Back then,” and he doesn’t have to specify _when_ , because Rose knows, “when we’re just starting out training, they would send us out on this wild scavenger hunt for metal parts. They’d group us up into teams, and we’d be given a list of metal parts that are hidden somewhere in the snow. They’re like, buried _real_ deep. If we manage to collect all of them, we’d be able to construct a small helper droid. Sometimes it can sing, too, which is pretty cool.”

Finn _really_ appreciates Rose for doing her best at a poker face. Stories about his upbringing in the First Order always makes people uncomfortable. He clears her throat. “Anyway, my team captain at the time is really clever. She snuck into the weaponry the night before and got us all magnet bracelets. Why the First Order had magnet bracelets in the first place, we’ll never know. The day of the hunt, we go out with the magnet bracelets, and in ten minutes we’re able to find all the metal parts.”

“’Cause they all flock to the bracelets,” Rose says.

Finn nods. “I’m thinking, what if we do the same thing to the enzymes?”

Rose blinks. Then she drags her chair closer to Finn’s, pen in hand, and says, “Tell me more.”

“I’m thinking—what if we can adsorb the enzyme molecules onto some kind of—inert material? Like nano-magnets?” Finn says.

“Like a carrier,” Rose hums, then perks up. “Oh, I see where you’re going with this. So then, in every cycle—”

Finn cuts in, “We can magnetically separate them—”

“—so they can be _reused,”_ Rose beams, sitting up. Finn can _see_ her forming about a thousand plans and to-do-lists in her mind. “Finn, this is incredible!”

She crosses the laboratory in two steps, rummaging through the supply shelf, mumbling to herself about magnetic nanoparticles and covalent bonds. Finn feels his heart soar, pride making him feel warm all over. “It’s not stupid?” Rose jumping to her feet after hearing his idea is a good enough of indication of his idea _not_ being stupid, but he needs to double-check.

Rose says, “No! Are you kidding? Where were you all my life—” in between her frantic search for something that she can’t seem to find in the mess of the tubes. “Finn, can you check any of the tubes down there for something called _chitosan_?”

Finn nods, a smile slowly spreading over his lips. He just did something incredible, and it has nothing to do with weapons or taking lives. He ducks under the work station, on the lookout for whatever it is that Rose is looking for in the mess of tubes she’s shoved haphazardly down the desks, thinking, _God, I can’t wait to tell Poe all about this._

*

Finn spends a lot of time thinking about the ocean.

His evenings are reserved for physical therapy now that his days are spent in the laboratory running cycles with Rose. He doesn’t get to go the beach as often as he likes, which makes him think about the ocean a lot, in the lull between activities.

The ocean rises and falls regularly during the day. The tide comes in or rises, then it turns and goes out or falls, and then turns again. He likes to stand in the point where the sand is the darkest, and lets water drown his feet as it backwashes to where it comes from. The waves roll, crash and break, but always, it returns to the ocean. Where it’s supposed to be.

The wave deals in absolutes. It rises, it falls.

The Jedi are good, the Resistance is good, the First Order is bad, and he’s stolen as a baby from a family he’ll never know, trained to do _one thing_ : to kill when he’s told to, except he didn’t do that. He made a decision to leave, and here he is, learning about recovery and questionable sex scenes in books and microorganisms and enzymes, and his hands may have been bloody but he’d like to think that he deserves a chance to be a good man.

*

At the 8th day mark, Black Squadron finally touches down on the tarmac. Finn sees them flying in formation out of the window in his room, just like in his imagination, and he almost throws away his research notes in his hassle to get to the hangar. He doesn’t even bother tying his shoelaces right. The second he’s decent, he _runs_ to the hangar, ignoring everything that Dr. Kalonia says about taking it easy. _This is Poe, he’s never going to take it easy._

He tries to find Poe among the mess of people milling about, bringing toolboxes and kits, mech-droids following along, and catches him jumping out of his X-Wing, tossing his helmet into a nearby technician. He gives the X-Wing a once-over, trying to find evidence of a blaster hit or something smoking, and is relieved to find that the X-Wing looks just the way it was two weeks ago. Nothing goes wrong. Poe is _fine_.

He's talking to the mechanic, the set of his jaw serious, and then he's approached by a heavy-set man in the same orange flightsuit. Finn recognizes him from the attack plan meeting on Starkiller Base, but he doesn’t know who he is yet. He knows the names, but he doesn't know which belong to whom. Poe starts walking out of the hangar, into the base, the man matching his step, and soon he is joined with two women, also wearing orange flightsuits, moving their arms animatedly as they talk.

Then Poe catches a sight of him from across the hangar, and Finn freezes. Poe's stopped talking, and his friends are looking in the same direction as him, looking at him, in his borrowed jacket, probably making the stupidest face. He's thinking, _Maybe I shouldn't have come. Maybe I should've waited for Poe in his quarters, when there's no one else but us._

But Poe's steps are sure, gaining speed as he's getting closer, and then he's running, and Finn's running too, suddenly forgetting that he's supposed to be all cool and smooth in front of Poe's cool pilot friends. Poe's arms go around him and Finn sighs, burying his nose into the crook of Poe's neck, so relieved that Poe's back, that now, instead of taking notes of things he wants to say to Poe, he can just say them, no more waiting.

(Until the next mission comes, but. Finn doesn't really want to think about that, not right now, when Poe is solid and real against him like this.)

"Finn," Poe says. "Finn," he says again, brightly, with a grin that makes Finn think about sunlight on sugar.

Finn gingerly takes Poe's face in his hands, inspecting for cuts or bruises, and only find Poe's wide eyes staring at him, his mouth half-open like he's in the middle of saying something, but forgets. "You're okay," says Finn.

"Yeah," Poe says, but it sounds a little strained. He keeps looking down.

"Oh, _stars_ , so Snap isn't kidding, huh?"

And Poe's friends are here. Finn abruptly takes his hands off of Poe's face, warmth flooding his own. Poe turns around and groans. "Come on, Jess," he says to the girl with dark hair like Rose’s.

" _Hello_ there," the girl says to Finn, completely bypassing Poe, her smile is wide but it's nothing like Poe's. This one looks like she's making a joke, and Finn isn't in on it. "I don't think we've been properly introduced, although," she looks back at Poe, who's shaking his head in exasperation, "I have heard _a lot_ about you."

"Jess," Poe warns.

"Aren't you going to introduce us, officially?" Jess says.

Poe stares at her, and then he sighs, long-sufferingly. He gestures at Finn. "Everyone, this is Finn," he says, addressing the next part exclusively at Jess, whose grin has gotten wider and a little terrifying, frankly. "As you all probably know, Finn is still currently recovering from a lightsaber wound when he faced off Kylo Ren, so try to not be—too much, alright?"

Finn shifts uncomfortably between his feet. "Um, actually, I'm okay now," he says. "So don't worry about being—too much."

Poe clears his throat. "Yeah. Um. I meant more like—be considerate, you know?"

"I've learned a lot while you were gone," Finn says defensively. "I know a lot of things.”

"Yeah, for sure, Finn, I meant it more like—" Poe cuts himself off. He looks between Finn and his squadron, Jess whose smile has disappeared, and this strange shift in mood is making Finn second-guess himself. Did he do something wrong?

Then Jess blurts out, "My name is Jess!"

She offers him her hand, and, when she realizes she's still wearing her gloves, removes it haphazardly. Finn shakes her hand. Her hand feels like Rey's, rough and calloused, although probably not for the same reasons as Rey.

"I'm Karé," the other girl says, smiling faintly. She has dark skin like Finn's, maybe just a few shades lighter, but her hair is blonde. The heavy-set man Finn sees earlier follows suit.

"My name's actually Temmin, but everybody just calls me Snap," he says. "And what did Dameron say to you about us, huh?"

Finn blinks. "Um, I guess everything except how you got the name Snap."

For some reason, that has Jess and Karé howling in laughter. "Oh, seriously," Jess tells him in between laughter, "You don't want to know."

"Dameron!" Snap is, well, snapping at Poe. "What, you went on a solo mission once and you turned against us?"

"All good things, guys, I swear," Poe says, holding both of his hands up in mock surrender, and they all start speaking over one another, exuberant and loud.

Finn falls into step beside Poe, feeling a little out of place. The way Poe’s friends interact with each other is so unlike him and Rose; they joke and tease one another, sometimes borderline offensive, but they always laugh and clap each other on the back, easy as breathing. Finn can see the bond the war has created between the four of them and wonders if this is what he could’ve been with Nines, Zeroes and Slip, had they not actively been pitted against one another, even as a team.

Poe nudges his elbow as Jess and Snap get into another argument that Finn can’t honestly follow. “You okay, big guy?”

Finn startles. “I should be asking you that. You’re the one who just got off a mission!”

Poe laughs. “It’s just recon, buddy, there’s nothing dangerous about that.”

“I know,” Finn says defensively. Then, in a smaller voice, “I just worry.”

Something softens in Poe’s eyes. He stops walking, letting his friends get a few feet ahead of him, and reaches out to cup Finn’s face, the way Finn just did. His hands feel hot on his cheeks, ridiculously solid and real, and Finn wonders if Poe feels this heaviness in his chest when Finn did this to him, too. His voice drops, gentle, only just for Finn. “I missed you.”

Finn’s breath catches. He touches one of Poe’s hands in return. “I missed you too,” he admits.

“Will you sit with me at dinner?” Poe asks, suddenly shy. “Wait, you’ve been discharged, right? Please tell me you’ve been discharged, or else I’m going to have to steal you.”

Finn laughs. “Of course! Do you think Dr. Kalonia would let me running around in the hangar if she’s still keeping me imprisoned in medical?” He remembers the way Snap teased Poe, and adds, “You missed a lot while you were gone.”

“Made more friends?” Poe says, taking his hands of Finn’s face, which leaves Finn a little bereft, but he keeps holding Finn’s hand as they start walking again, which makes up for it. “Saved the galaxy once again?”

“I _didn’t_ save the galaxy,” Finn rolls his eyes. He has this urge to swing their joined hands as they walk. He suppresses it.

“But you _did_ ,” Poe insists, and this doesn’t look like an argument that Finn can win, so he lets it go. “Listen, I smell like bantha shit, do you mind if I go take a shower? I’ll meet you at the cafeteria and you can tell me all about what you’ve been up to.”

Disturbingly, Finn suddenly remembers a certain scene in that goddamn unrealistic book that he’s been hate-reading involving freshers and certain strenuous activities that he is sure will be bad for his back and—he needs to stop _thinking,_ right the fuck now.

“Yeah, sure,” Finn says, aiming to be all casual. He doesn’t try to rip his hand from Poe’s; he thinks it may give himself away. “I’ll—see you there.”

If Poe notices, he doesn’t say anything, which once again explains to Finn why he’s Finn’s favorite person of all time. He just gives Finn a brief smile, squeezes his hand, and runs off to join his friends to go to, presumably, the fresher.

Finn sucks in a breath. Everything is _fine_.

*

There is one error in his plan, and it’s a big flaw: he has no idea what to do in a cafeteria. Every day of the week since he’s been discharged, he’s been eating his meals anywhere _but_ the cafeteria. Dr. Kalonia sneaks him food during physical therapy, and Rose always has their lunch delivered to the laboratory. Plus, Borkus, the nice Sullustan chef, lets him bring his food to his room as long as he returns the dishes washed and cleaned by the next day.

He’s a little out of sorts.

But he knows the custom: wait in line, get your portion, sit down, and eat. It’s simple enough. Taking a deep breath, he pushes the door open and joins the long line, hoping that Poe would come here sooner just so he can do something other than _wait_.

“Finn!”

Finn tries not to be too disappointed that it’s not Poe. Jess, changed out of her flightsuit into civvies that look way too soft to be military regulation, runs up to him, skipping about four people who mutter their annoyance at her, but all Jess does is flash them a brilliant smile and that makes it all okay, somehow.

“You wearing pajamas, Pava?” One of the people waiting behind them says.

“Hell yeah I am,” Jess says. “I spent nearly three weeks without showering in my flightsuit, let me have this, will ya?”

There’s laughter behind Finn, and Jess readily turns back to him. “Hi. Poe wants me to tell you that he’ll be late. The General wants to have a word before we have a huge meeting after dinner.”

“Oh,” Finn says. “Thank you, I guess.”

“You’re very welcome,” Jess smiles, and this time it doesn’t make Finn feel like he’s not in on the joke.

He lets Jess take his spot, which Jess thinks is very sweet of him, but really, Finn just wants to observe and copy. There are a lot of options for dinner tonight, which he has been told is a way of celebrating the return of a mission with no casualties, and especially for Jess, Borkus says as they approach the counter, “Dandoranian signature cream croquettes!”

“You didn’t!” Jess beams, and scoops about a dozen onto her tray. “Borkus, seriously, I owe you.” She proceeds to add mashed potatoes, which Finn already knows and loves, eggs with a runny yolk, which Borkus, again, custom-made for her, some kind of fried white meat dripping with aola, and an unhealthy dollop of yellow viscous sauce. Her pile of food is kind of mountainous at the end, and Finn raises his eyebrows at her.

“Gotta have color and variation in your diet,” Jess explains, winking.

Finn decides to try the Dandoranian croquettes, if only because he thinks Jess will be mortally offended if he doesn’t, the fried white meat, and a lot of fruits to eat with his blue yogurt. Jess waits for him at the end of the line, and leads him to where Snap and Karé are already sitting. Finn sits next to Jess, leaving just enough space for Poe when he shows up.

“So, Finn,” Snap leans in, holding an Endorian chicken leg, “Nice jacket.”

Before Finn can respond, Jess cuts in, pointing at him with a fork. The Dandoranian croquette is stabbed through at the end of it. “Hey, that’s not fair!”

“What? I’m just asking Finn about the jacket,” Snap says.

“Oh, so it’s not okay when I do it, but it’s okay when you do it?” Jess retorts.

“I was just being nice!” Snap says, raising the chicken leg like a shield.

Karé sighs. “Will the two of you quit it? When Poe says to drop it, we drop it, alright?”

“Drop what?” Finn asks. The feeling of not being in on the joke returns, and he frowns. “Did Poe say anything about me?”

Karé looks back and forth between Jess and Snap, who have gone uncharacteristically quiet, staring at their respective trays. She turns to Finn, a smile that doesn’t feel condescending on her lips, and says, “Only good things, Finn.”

Poe shows up not long after, his own tray rivaling Jess’ pile height, beaming as he makes a beeline for their table. He sits across from Finn, which makes Finn a little miffed since he’d saved a spot for Poe, but Poe grins up at him, his curls soft and bouncy from a wash at the fresher, and Finn forgets all about it.

“Sorry I took so long,” Poe says. “The General wants details.”

The gist of it: the First Order is reawakening. They’ve spotted what looks to be a mega-class star dreadnought in construction on the waters of the aquatic world of Sibensko. The fleet is scarce, but replenishing, and quickly.

“So now the question is,” Poe says, “Do we take the fight to them or do we wait?”

“Sibensko’s in Centrist space,” Jess says, disdain making her nose scrunch up. “They’ll let the First Order do anything as long as they get their pay. Bunch of ‘seeing both sides’ bullshit.”

Finn’s quiet while Karé and Jess continue to argue back and forth about Sibensko’s political stance. He’s stuck on the part where Poe says the fleet is replenishing. He knows what that means: more trainees will be deployed to their first fight, and more babies will be stolen to make up for their absence. To a lot of them, the mega dreadnought, when finished, will be the only home they will ever know.

Poe gently taps his hand with a finger. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Finn smiles, strained, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Poe swirls his soup around. “Tell me everything that you’ve learned while I was gone?”

Finn swallows. After days of wishing he could talk to Poe about the new things he’s discovered, he doesn’t know why it’s so hard for him to tell him now. There’s an invisible weight behind his throat now, pressing against the words, forcing him only to think about the nameless Stormtroopers on that planet who’d march into their deaths, should the First Order require it.

“I—I went to the beach,” Finn says.

Poe looks at him like he expected something more, then his face shutters. “That’s great, buddy,” he mumbles, and frowns into his soup.

Finn tears his eyes away. He feels bad for making Poe look like that, but he doesn’t have the words to explain to Poe how he’s feeling. He knows the Resistance is his home now, and that he shouldn’t be sparing any thought or sympathy to the people on the side of the First Order, including all the Stormtroopers that he’ll never know anyway, but the harder he tries to think in absolutes, the more grey he sees.

The Jedi is good, the Resistance is good, the First Order is bad, and he is—

He is not a traitor, not to the Resistance. It’s just.

_Another life didn’t even occur to me._

He spots Rose on one of the tables, and she’s waving at him, the big smile on her face a stark contrast to the cloud in his mind. She’s sitting with a girl who looks just like her, but slightly older. Her sister Paige, Finn assumes. He waves back at her.

“You know Tico?” Poe asks, his voice carefully neutral.

Finn clears his throat. “Yeah—I work with her now, at the lab.”

“Oh,” Poe mumbles.

Finn doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he just shrugs, and digs into the fried white meat. It tastes good, like everything that he’s tasted so far, and when Jess unceremoniously drizzles it with the yellow sauce, it tastes even better, but everything crumbles into cardboard in his mouth. Poe’s smiling at him, but something doesn’t feel right, and he can’t stop thinking about _goddamn Stormtroopers._

*

Command center is larger than Finn remembers it being. Karé helpfully explains to Finn that while Finn is on a comma, the Resistance has received some funding that allows them to renovate a few of the central facilities on the base. The holoscreens are new, too, and the projections, while still blue, are clearer, the images sharper.

Finn is honestly surprised to be invited to the meeting. He still has no rank, hasn’t touched a blaster since Starkiller Base, and has accomplished nothing but reading a lot of books since he woke up. In this room filled with the brightest in the Resistance, Finn has never felt more like he didn’t belong. Not for the first time, he wishes Rey were here, if only to make fun of the proceedings. Even Jess, who is wearing pajamas, looks more at home than Finn is.

The General commands the attention of the room all at once. “The First Order has reawakened,” she starts, and just like that, it feels like all the air in the room has been sucked out. The room goes pin-drop quiet. “As per our intel suggested, confirmed by the recent recon mission carried out by Black Squadron, the rest of their fleet is taking refuge at an aquatic planet called Sibensko.”

The projection in the middle of the room enlarges on one point in the Expansion Region. The General taps on it. “Generally, people see this region as a largely Centrist place, but those who have been with me for long knows that it is, more of than not, not the case. Home to the warrior race Amaxine, on the surface, they appear to be the financiers and enablers of Rinnrivin’s smuggling cartels when in fact, they are mainly proxies of First Order sympathizers. Always has been.”

A holo of a woman wearing the black of an Empire TIE fighter pilot appears next to the planet, followed by another, more recent picture, this time in the First Order get-up, looking much older with a scar down her face. _Arliz Hadrassian._

“Black Squadron was able to uncover some holos of First Order activities,” the General nods at BB-8, who unclasps its front pocket to show several holo projections at once. Finn feels his heart quicken. The dreadnought, unfinished but still menacing, sitting on top of water, an aerial shot that must’ve been taken while Poe’s X-Wing is airborne, close enough to be dangerous. Vessels coming in and out, presumably carrying materials, then the rancid face of General Hux, head bent in conversation with the female pilot on the holo.

Then, a closer look at the construction going down underneath, at Stormtroopers hauling cable ties and winches, breaking apart steelstone to build the walls. Finn spends too much time speculating which base they come from, what their designations are, how old they are.

“Commander,” the General says to Poe, and he steps into view, looking everywhere except at Finn.

“With the Republic gone, there is not much we can do with these holos,” Poe says. “This evidence is only meant for us, as the first line of defense against the First Order, to serve as a reminder that our job is not yet done. We have a big question to answer tonight, folks, and that is: do we strike, or do we wait?”

Finn folds his arms around himself, while next to him, Jess and Karé step forward, ready with an answer of their own. Admiral Statura is the one who speaks first. “It is not within the Resistance’s nature to strike first,” he begins. “But, given that we’ve seen what the First Order is capable of, it seems very unwise to sit around and wait for them to strike first.”

“Aye,” Jess says. She’s lost all the laughter from her eyes. “We can’t give them the time to be at full strength. It’s too risky. The Republic stayed complacent while the First Order ran rampant around the galaxy, and now they were all gone. We should not make the same mistakes they did.”

“Our fuel reserves are depleting,” Admiral Ackbar reminds the room. “Before we move recklessly into planning another attack, we must consider how we even get there. It’s an aquatic planet; none of our vessels are designed to withstand primarily aquatic terrain. It’ll damage our fighters.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Finn sees Rose opening her mouth, but Poe speaks before she does, “We still haven’t heard from Blue Squadron, sir. There’s still hope just yet.” Rose visibly deflates. “And as for the terrain, I’m sure our engineers still have a few tricks up their sleeves, sir.”

The General still hasn’t spoken. Finn takes his chance. “There—” All eyes lock on him, and he fights through the growing panic in the back of his mind to finish the whole sentence, “There are children on that ship. There _will_ be.” When no one opposes him, he continues, “That’s how the First Order replenishes their ground troops. They get the trainees on the field. If we strike first, no one will spare any thought to the children, they’ll just—leave them to die.”

The room goes silent, and then there are whispers, building up in volume until a voice booms, “Permission to speak freely, General?” And it’s a captain, one that Finn’s never met—Finn doesn’t miss the way he skips right over Poe, who’s moderating the meeting. The jacket suddenly feels hot around his shoulders.

Poe looks between the General and the captain, and when the General nods, the captain wastes no time. “Let’s not kid ourselves with all this talk of children,” he says. “They’re Stormtroopers.”

Poe stiffens visibly. “Captain,” he warns.

“Come _on_ , you’re biased, Dameron. He saved your life, wore your jacket—big deal! Who’s to say he’s not secretly working for the First Order, huh?” the captain says, pointing at Finn, and Finn sees the shame flash in Poe’s face, fleeting but _there_ , and the panic snakes his way around his heart, squeezes it until Finn feels like he can’t breathe. “And they’re made different now, aren’t they? They trained them since birth, they know nothing but to destroy—”

“ _Stolen_ from a family they’ll never know,” Poe hisses, but the whispers are growing louder, and all Finn hears is agreement. “Finn _defected_ from the First Order—”

“And what has he done for us since then, huh?” the captain pushes. “Limping around the base, listening to all of our plans?”

Finn wants to get out. He has to get out of here.

Poe’s words sound like they’re ground between his teeth. Finn’s never heard Poe sound like that before, and he doesn’t know if this is a good thing. “He helped us _destroy_ the Starkiller Base, in case you forgot, Captain.”

Except Finn _didn’t_ , he was only ever there to get Rey. He _lied_ about knowing the ins-and-outs of the Starkiller Base, he couldn’t save Han Solo, and then, when it mattered, he _failed_ a duel against Kylo Ren and had his spine severed.

He wants to close his eyes, but some sick part of him wants to witness how this all goes. He repeats the mantra in his head, _the Jedi is good—_

“Could all be a trick, so we could all trust him,” the captain says. “Remember Oddy Muva? You trusted him too, Dameron. And look where it got us. We shouldn’t listen to him—for all we know, he’s selling us out as we speak. I say we strike at dawn, and be done with it, bucketheads and all.”

_The Resistance is—_

“He already knows too much,” another person speaks up, and Finn doesn’t even want to look up. “If he leaves the Resistance, we have to neutralize him.”

And all the air leaves Finn’s chest all at once.

Phasma is suddenly in front of him, his face reflected on the shiny chrome of her armor, a scared, sweaty face that doesn’t belong to a good man. “Submit your blaster for inspection, FN-2187,” she thunders. “And report yourself for reconditioning at my station at once.”

A commotion has broken. He thinks he sees Rose, hands fisted on her sides, going up against the captain, who’s two heads taller than her, yelling something. Poe’s saying, in an ice-cold voice, “Are you suggesting we _kill him?_ ” and at the same time, the General, rising from her seat, shouting, “Order!”

Another silence falls, but somehow, it’s more deafening than all the shouting. The room stands at attention, staring straight ahead, but the General is looking at Finn, and he’s remembering, _I won’t be the person to ask you to pick up a blaster._

He silently begs her, _Please. Do not let them kill the children._

But Leia has lived through two wars. She is only person in this room who understands the meaning of _casualties_ better than anyone. The needs of the many, in the end, outweigh the needs of the few. And what’s the life of a few hundred children, compared to the loss of an entire galactic system?

_I won’t be the person to ask you to pick up a blaster_.

He wonders if the General can see the same thing in his eyes as Maz—the eyes of a man who wants to run.

Because the General had always known, didn’t she? She’d always known that’s not the kind of person Finn is. Since the day he woke up as FN-2187, he’d always wanted to run. He’d just fooled himself into thinking that he can ever be anything else, let alone a good man.

In that instant, he makes another choice.

He runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the pseduo-science part is more or less inspired by what's supposed to be my final project for my bachelor's degree. no thanks to covid, i cannot carry out the experiment and have to be confined to only doing literature review in my apartment. oh well. 
> 
> the finn/rose friendship is honestly so much to write! other than finn, rose is definitely the character that gets disrespected the most. (fuck you, JJ Abrams) 
> 
> please let me know what you think about this chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> i just wanted to give finn the story that he deserves. i think i owe john boyega that much. a lot of the imagery and the themes of this fic is influenced by moonlight (2016) and imperial dreams (2017), which john is in, and really damn fantastic in there too. 'the middle of the world' is a direct reference to moonlight (2016). 
> 
> this is a rewrite of the entire last two movies, which focuses on finn as a main character, and the jedi that we deserve. this fic has been sitting on my draft for quite a long time, and i kept debating whether i should publish or not, and just decided to say fuck it. i hope it's at least worth your while <3


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